Attitudes of College Aged Students to Technology Based Alcohol Intervention An Interactive Qualifying Project Submitted to the Faculty of the WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science By _________________________ Dean Kiourtsis _________________________ James Nolan _________________________ Katelyne Sibley _________________________ Kevin Truc Date: April, 28th 2016 Approved : ______________________________ Professor Emmanuel Agu, Advisor Abstract Almost half of U.S. college students binge drink. Compared to traditional mediums, technology presents an opportunity to investigate automatic monitoring and passive analysis to provide in-the-moment intervention. This project’s objective was learning about the opinions of college aged students to specific technologies that can be used to monitor and control binge drinking. Focus groups and a survey highlighted the concerns of accuracy, ease of use, and relevance to the target audience as key features in a device for this purpose. 2 Acknowledgements The project team would like to thank Professor Emmanuel Agu for his support. His continual guidance and encouragement allowed this project to succeed. In addition, we would like to thank all the participants of the focus groups and subjects who responded to our survey. 3 Contents 1-Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 10 1-1-Alcohol and Binge Drinking Statistics ................................................................................. 10 1-2-Alcohol Interventions.......................................................................................................... 11 1-3-Understanding Binge Drinking and its Effects .................................................................... 12 1-4-Types of Technology ........................................................................................................... 12 1-5-The Goal of this IQP ............................................................................................................ 13 2-Background and Related Work.................................................................................................. 14 2-1-Types of Interventions ........................................................................................................ 14 2-2-Non-Technology Based Interventions ................................................................................ 14 2-3-Technology Based Interventions ........................................................................................ 16 2-4-Related Works ..................................................................................................................... 17 2-5- Existing Technologies ......................................................................................................... 19 3-Methodology .............................................................................................................................. 25 3-1-Research of new and existing technologies ....................................................................... 25 3-2-Conducting the focus group ............................................................................................... 26 3-3-Conducting the survey ........................................................................................................ 27 4-Results and Analysis .................................................................................................................. 29 4-1-Focus Group Results and Analysis ...................................................................................... 29 4-1-1-Device accuracy ........................................................................................................... 34 4-1-2-Ease of use ................................................................................................................... 34 4-1-3-Privacy Concerns .......................................................................................................... 35 4-1-4-Ability to Intervene ...................................................................................................... 36 4-1-5-Multi-functionality ....................................................................................................... 36 4-1-6-Relevance to Casual Drinkers ...................................................................................... 37 4-2-Survey Results and Analysis ............................................................................................ 37 4-2-1-Smartphone Gait Inference ......................................................................................... 39 4-2-2-LBMI-A .......................................................................................................................... 40 4-2-3-Breathalyzers ............................................................................................................... 40 5-Conclusions ............................................................................................................................... 42 References ..................................................................................................................................... 43 4 Appendix 1: Focus Group Data .................................................................................................... 47 Appendix 2: Survey Data .............................................................................................................. 54 Table 1: List of Researched Technologies ................................................................................... 20 Table 2: Categorized Technologies .............................................................................................. 21 Figure 1: Diagram of the fingerprint interlock ............................................................................. 22 Figure 2: Soberlink Breathalyzer .................................................................................................. 23 Formula 1: Sample Size Calculation............................................................................................. 28 Table 3: Focus Group Subject Demographic Data ....................................................................... 30 Figure 3: Frequency of Alcohol Consumptions for Focus Group Subjects .................................. 31 Figure 4: Frequency of Binge Drinking for Focus Group Subjects .............................................. 31 5 Executive Summary Introduction Excessive consumption of alcohol, such as binge-drinking, is a major, growing concern in the population overall, as well as a particular concern in the youth of college campuses in the United States. Binge drinking is defined by the CDC as 4 drinks for women or 5 drinks for men within a 2-hour timeframe. Furthermore, an alcoholic drink is defined as 12 ounces of beer, 4 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of 80 proof alcohol. There is a long history in the management of alcoholism and rehabilitation due to alcohol abuse. Literature of various programs dating as far back as 1969, illustrates the effectiveness of counseling, therapy, and drugs in curbing alcohol abuse. A study showed that 40% of college students participate in binge drinking. Consequences of binge drinking include increased risk for mental illness, organ failure, injury, and death. Despite its successes, this tradition of rehabilitation has not readily taken advantage of development of recent technological developments. Technology interventions for alcohol abuse can provide unique abilities such as automatic tracking, personalized analyses, and in-the- moment interventions to potential episodes of binge drinking. The goal of this project was to inquire about the positive and negative thoughts, as well as the general feelings that drinking-age college students have towards various alcohol abuse intervention technologies. Background In order to better understand how effective a specific technology intervention may be, it is important to identify which category of intervention it fits into, and understand the strengths and weaknesses of said category. The most common methods of intervening in problem drinking are non-technology methods. Among problem drinkers, those that have one social consequence or dependency symptom, an effective method of intervention comes in the form of reducing the 6 amount of alcohol they consume (Walitzer & Connors, 1999). Jessica Cronce and Mary Larimer explore the components of a typical intervention process, and categorize interventions into “three broad categories: educational/awareness, cognitive/behavioral skills-based, and motivational/feedback-based” (Cronce & Larimer 2007). In comparison to the amount of research and development into the alcohol abuse intervention technologies themselves, the amount of research put into finding the attitudes that people hold regarding the use of said technologies is remarkably low. A phone survey of over a thousand households inquired about the use of technology in preventing the operation of vehicles while under the influence of alcohol. In this study, over 80% of respondents were in favor of requiring that the vehicles of convicted drunk drivers include interlock devices, and over 60% of respondents were in favor of the interlock being installed in all vehicles if realistically possible. In three other surveys 58%, 37%, and 56% of the respondents had similar